If You Support Disabled People, Please Stand With Us Against Discord’s Redesign.

If you support disabled people, please stand with us against Discord’s redesign.

...and do more than reblog this post about it.

Chronic migraines. Dyslexia. ADHD. Autism. Vision impairment. Visual sensory processing disorder. Colorblind. & Neurotypical. Abled.

These are aspects of people that are affected by Discord’s new update to its color scheme and font, and there very well could be more I didn’t mention. Yes, you read it right, abled people and neurotypical people too. You are not immune to eyestrain.

What are the issues?

A font which is both overly uniform and overly squished, with many letters that have essentially the same silhouette as others and could easily be flipped and look the same as another. ▻ This is dyslexic-unfriendly, as well as generally harder to read and an issue for people with visual impairments who may find that letters bleed together or that their eyes ‘skip’ over letters or words at times.

A color scheme that is so highly saturated that it both immediately draws your attention and also makes you want to immediately look away. ▻ This is generally unfriendly, affecting people with sensory issues the most (ADHD/Autism, migraines, processing disorders), but it’s also colorblind-unfriendly. Due to the differences between the colors being exclusively the part that changes the named color (hue; “green” vs “blue”) instead of both that and the colors being different intensities (saturation; “neon green” vs “leaf green”), they look practically identical.

Aren’t there more? No. This is pretty much all that was changed.

Discord changed TWO THINGS and pretty much managed to land every single person possible to genuinely hurt with a visual design change that doesn’t add or remove any elements. Including abled and neurotypical people!!!

Discord is currently a good number of people’s lifeline and way to connect with others. And with this change, they just made using their app hurt. They know that we can’t leave their app without leaving our friends and communities behind. They know that if they can just sweep this under the rug, they won’t have to do a thing.

...So we can’t let them.

Why would Discord do this?

It’s actually fairly simple. Discord was hemorrhaging money from its very conception. Discord only exists because investors think it’ll make money in the future. If Discord doesn’t do as well, investors will push to make it “better” or they’ll drop their funding. Discord was probably forced into this situation, they probably knew exactly what would happen.

We have to show their investors that Discord was right.

What can we do to fix this?

DON’T:

Reply to Discord’s tweet about the design change. ▻ It gives Discord more attention, and if any complaints are acknowledged they are directed to Discord’s accessibility forums.

ONLY post on Discord’s accessibility forums. ▻ It gives Discord stats to work with, but it also means the outcry isn’t public. We need everyone to see this, not just Discord.

DO:

Reblog this post. ▻ Spreads the awareness, and all.

Retweet, reply to, and/or like this tweet: https://twitter.com/KarklesMarx/status/1393223369571586053 ▻ This tweet is part of our and our friends’ initiative to get this big and get this public.

Make your own posts about it on different social medias. ▻ Tumblr, Twitter, Discord servers, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever ground you have, use it. You can help make this change too.

Find other people doing the same thing. ▻ One initiative is never enough. Look for other people making posts like these and boost their posts too.

IF YOU KNOW ANOTHER LANGUAGE, MAKE POSTS OF YOUR OWN BOOSTING IT IN OTHER LANGUAGES. ▻ Please. There are probably a lot of people we haven’t reached because this is an all-English post.

Wait, don’t you have pictures of what’s going on?

We do. They’re under the cut, to prevent causing issues for people reading the post.

This compilation post of the smaller problems: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/1500001066342-Fix-Your-Stuff-or-ALLOW-CUSTOM-CLIENTS-or-BOTH-

Images that show some of the changes:

[Two screenshots of the Discord icon on an IOS device. One is a cool indigo gradient, the other is a solid, brightly saturated indigo.]

[The words “gaming central” twice in Discord’s new font. One is bold, the other is not.]

[The words “reddit fart reddit smell” in Discord’s new font. Underneath, the highly saturated indigo as seen in the icons, stretching across the screen to indicate new messages.]

[Discord’s old indigo, icon, and stylized font displayed above Discord’s new indigo, icon, and stylized font.]